Want To Be a Trendsetter on Twitter? Follow CareerBuilder Example

Svetlana Gladkova,

on September 28, 2008,

I like checking out current Twitter trends from time to time to see what topics get the most attention in the twitterverse. While Google Trends are also interesting and often show some very interesting things about what is popular among internet population on any given day, the most popular topics on Twitter are also interesting to see how a smaller and more technology-aware crowd reacts to some events in the real or online life.

To see what exactly people are talking about most actively on Twitter, you can go to Twitter Search (ex-Summize acquired by Twitter in July). On the site you can search for mentions of absolutely any term by Twitter users and it is also possible to see the most popular terms there as well - Trending topics.

Lately when doing some search for a term for a post to see how people react to the topic I research, I have noticed one term appearing in the top 10 from time to time - CareerBuilder. It is not always there in the hot trends but appears rather frequently so I wanted to see what could make the job search site such a newsmaker for the Twitter audience so often - especially since I have not seen CareerBuilder news like funding or acquisitions maybe mentioned anywhere at all.

The answer proved to be very simple - CareerBuilder generated all the activity required to make the name of the site the most discussed topic on Twitter on its own. The thing is that the guys behind the website simply configured a few Twitter accounts (each account focused on a particular city) to broadcast all the latest job positions advertised on CareerBuilder automatically to Twitter. This resulted in a few dozens of new tweets posted to a few timelines belonging to different CareerBuilder geographical sections every hour (as I believe they must have some moderation for new jobs where they approve new postings to the site in bulk).

I also suspect that these tweets are posted using some sort of a script as they show “from web” as the posting method while normally when we see such automatic tweets published via RSS we see “from Twitterfeed” there. Unfortunately I don’t think it is realistic to publish more than 1 tweet every minute manually from the web interface, I think CareerBuilder has a script in place to automatically transmit all the jobs. But since I don’t think it violates Twitter ToS in any way, it is Ok - the only thing it proves is that this frequent posting of updates is intentional.

All the tweets posted to CareerBuilder timelines contain the term CareerBuilder itself - and this is exactly what brings CareerBuilder to the list of the hot trends on Twitter regularly. Basically this means that absolutely anyone who wants his name or a name of his product appear as a hot trend on Twitter can do so easily by frequently posting new messages (preferably every minute or so, I believe - this must be enough and is perfectly realistic if you use a client such as Twhirl to post your messages).

But while I don’t think appearing on Twitter Search as one of the hottest topics will actually result in enormous traffic or popularity of your own website or blog, to me the ease of becoming a trendsetter on Twitter is a very interesting discovery. Such activities may be viewed as harmless by some people but I actually think that Twitter should do something to prevent such manipulations - after all, when people want to see hot trends on Twitter Search, they must want to see topics that are actually hot, not those that are pushed there intentionally by a few accounts working specifically on that.

I think that tweaking the algorithm that determines what is hot by adding the parameter that terms must be contained in tweets sent from numerous of different accounts, not from a single one or a stable group of accounts, must not be particularly difficult - and should prove to be worth doing eventually to prevent intentional or unintentional manipulations of trends in the future. And with more and more companies arriving to broadcast there information on Twitter (having no idea of what proper etiquette is on Twitter) this may very well develop into a problem sooner or later.

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22 Comments (Subscribe to rss)

Ben - September 29, 2008 at 02:13 am PDT

So to put it another way, they’re spamming Twitter?
rod / techfold.com - September 29, 2008 at 02:15 am PDT

You’re seeing the product of the Twitter API. Its pretty simple to push a status update to Twitter via the API whenever you update your site, list a new job posting, etc., and it always shows as “from web.” Here’s another example of an API generated twitter stream (from one of my apps):

http://twitter.com/mashdex

Twitter’s own API docs are here: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 02:18 am PDT

Ben, I did not want to sound that harsh myself. They may think it is Ok since people often think that only those people that subscribe to them get their updates - forgetting the public timeline and the search trends. I can’t be sure of their intentions here but the use of script may be an indication of an intentional spamming, true.
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 02:20 am PDT

@rod: Thank for the details on the API use, this proves they must have some script communicating with Twitter API at place. But that brings me to another question: how unlimited should such use of API be and at which point it reaches the level of spamming other users?
Gregory Ng - September 29, 2008 at 03:44 am PDT

This brings up a good point of the age old question, is it SPAM if you can subscribe or unsubscribe to it. Its not like Career Builder is sending unsolicited @messages to people. But they are clouding up the public timeline. hmmm.
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 03:54 am PDT

Gregory, that’s definitely an interesting question. The tricky thing is that people can always block their accounts if they are annoyed by the number of new messages but since active users rarely watch public timeline, it will hardly happen. And if people actively blocked it, the accounts could be suspended by Twitter. But it is definitely a very fine line between spam and updating people on the news and I am sure it is not particularly difficult to find other Twitter accounts acting on the verge of spam as well.
Stephen Kelly - September 29, 2008 at 05:06 am PDT

Another option would be to make it that someone has to have a certain minimum number of followers (say 25 or 30) - to be included in the count - but once again - this would also be easy to ‘doctor’ as well, or has to be a member for a certain period of time (one month) - before there tweets count.
Neil - September 29, 2008 at 05:13 am PDT

Like Svetlana said, if they changed the algorithm to calculate trending topics to be the sum of unique accounts, as opposed to summing multiple uses of that word in the same account, then it wouldn’t be a problem (unless they already do this and it’s the fact that career builder has an account for each region which is why it still appears). I wouldn’t be surprised though, that if this gets a bit more recognition then it won’t just be career builder that starts appearing in the trending topics…
jhandl - September 29, 2008 at 05:13 am PDT

We at Flaptor also have a twitter trends detector (http://twist.flaptor.com), but ours would not pick CareerBuilder as a trend.
Pierre - September 29, 2008 at 05:21 am PDT

Hello,

If you’re interested in twitter stats / buzz measurement, I would recommend you give http://www.twitscoop.com a try.
We have worked hard on fighting twitter spam, and we can confirm that the ratio of spam vs “real” tweets is increasing exponentially. Our live tag cloud / hot trends would look dramatically different if we were to switch off our antispam algorithm… As a side note, fighting twitter spam is very similar to fighting email spam, and although your suggestions would be efficient in the short term, I can assure you that the variety of spam “styles” we’re experimenting would quickly make you realise that a static rule-based antispam algo is bound to fail.
In this respect, it seems we manage to do a slighlty better job than search.twitter (ex summize)
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 05:27 am PDT

Stephen: Well, even if each of such parameters could not help all on its own, if they all are applied together, it could definitely help fix the algorithm enough to avoid such strange situations.
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 05:31 am PDT

@Neil: Yes, we can not be sure that they don’t already have some limitation in place and they could see if all the tweets come from the same account. But since CareerBuilder sends updates to different accounts it may deceive the algorithm. But you are absolutely right that once more companies realize it could be done, they will start doing it and we will be left with only brand names in the hot trends on Twitter so Twitter developers should also recognize it as a problem and find some extra prevention measure to avoid this.
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 05:33 am PDT

@jhandle: This may mean that you have a different algorithm and either Twitter will buy you to better determine trends or will learn some things from you to fix the algorithm.
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 05:37 am PDT

@Pierre: Thanks for introducing yet another way to monitor trends on Twitter taking spam prevention into account. You know what, if you could shoot me an email (s.gladkova@profy.com) with some details on how your anti-spam algorithm works and how the with and without spam versions look, it may very well become a topic for another post. I am definitely intrigued myself.
Michelle Evans - September 29, 2008 at 05:46 am PDT

It’s ironic that just recently I’ve had 3 or 4 emails that say they’re from CareerBuilder and they say I have to log in because someone has been trying to access my account. The links they include, however, appear to be CareerBuilder links but they go to sites that work network won’t allow me to open. Besides, I realized after the first one, that I’ve never had a CareerBuilder account. I’m not sure if the two are related somehow, but it’s just curious, that’s all.
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 06:02 am PDT

Michelle, this is definitely ironic and sounds more than suspicious now, especially when you tell you have never even had an account with the site. It definitely smells like the site owners have decided to spam people to get some extra visibility.
Mike Rundle - September 29, 2008 at 07:01 am PDT

I’m not sure how I see the title of your blog entry really working into the article here. You’ve outlined how CareerBuilder has various accounts all posting links constantly (some would call that spamming) throughout the day. So, you’re advocating following the “CareerBuilder example” if you want to become a “trendsetter on Twitter?”

No, thank you. I’d rather not piss off my followers by blanketing them with spam.
Svetlana Gladkova - September 29, 2008 at 08:58 am PDT

@Mike: The title was full of irony and trendsetter is not in a good sense here, it’s only because Twitter search names it “trending topics”. I thought the post is criticizing enough not to send anyone to repeat the example actually.
Vi Wickam - October 02, 2008 at 11:26 am PDT

I actually liked the article title.

My suggestion would for Twitter to manage it’s trending algorithm, and possibly to limit the frequency with which one account can post (not that they couldn’t game that as well), but multiple updates per minute might be deemed excessive for anyone to subscribe to - especially if they are listing job openings repeatedly.
Svetlana Gladkova - October 02, 2008 at 11:40 pm PDT

Vi Wickam: Very true, of course an account with this abnormal frequency of updates could very well be subject for investigation as they now investigate accounts of potential spammers - this could also help prevent such situations further.
Karl Foxley - February 26, 2009 at 02:41 am PDT

Interesting post. It’s a shame that people find ways to abuse the sites that others enjoy but unfortunately, where people congregate spammers always follow.

The great thing about Twitter is how easy it is to stop following someone who’s tweets appear to be spam. I think the @spam reporting system could be wider publicized to also help combat this.
Twitter Search - May 26, 2009 at 06:39 pm PDT

thats great that you are talking about the twitter api,a good example of searching with the twitter api is on twiogle.com because you can search on twitter and google at the same time.

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